ABOUT

Welcome to our blog in which we hope to keep you informed about the goings on at West Dorset Leisure Holidays and our 5 Holiday Parks – Highlands End, Golden Cap, Graston Copse, Larkfield and Sandyholme.

Each of our Dorset campsites offers something different. All are based in unique locations around the UNESCO World Heritage Jurassic Coast, with a range of accommodation to choose from and Holiday Homes for Sale.

WDLH BLOG

The goings on at West Dorset Leisure Holidays.

ABOUT

Welcome to our blog in which we hope to keep you informed about the goings on at West Dorset Leisure Holidays and our 5 Holiday Parks – Highlands End, Golden Cap, Graston Copse, Larkfield and Sandyholme.

Each of our Dorset campsites offers something different. All are based in unique locations around the UNESCO World Heritage Jurassic Coast, with a range of accommodation to choose from and Holiday Homes for Sale.

FRIENDS

Golden Cap’s 40th Anniversary

It does not seem possible that 40 years ago the family purchased the park and Vanessa walked into the Golden Cap Reception to start her long career in the management and development of the Park.

As you can imagine, it was very different in 1978 with older Caravans being served by very old and out-of-date facilities the park but the Park was still very popular and an important holiday destination for many families and we still have links with those visitors today.

With continuous improvements and upgrades including the merger of Alberlon to make one large Golden Cap Holiday Park, Vanessa is proud to be still providing an excellent holiday destination for young visitors and many relatives of those visitors on the Park in 1978.

In 2012 the Park was finally granted a planning consent which gives the foundations for Vanessa and her family to take the Park forward for the next generations to enjoy the wonderful Jurassic Coast at Seatown.

We look forward to once again welcoming thousands of visitors to enjoy Golden Cap and Seatown in 2018!

Pods, Lodges & more Lodges!

As we enter early February, the weather has stopped being wet but is now extremely cold down on the Dorset Coast. Last weekend we had a number of visitors staying on the park including Touring Caravans and Motorhomes for our first weekend of opening.

We also welcomed over 350 guests to Martins’s over the weekend for our hugely popular first Gin Masterclass enjoyed by 130 people and our annual visit from over 230 people from the Melplash Show Society. It was great to be busy with the hustle and bustle of park life.

Our first two Premier Camping Pods have arrived, yippee!! Don’t they look lovely on there temporary holding ground while we complete the works. These two are called West Bay and Marshwood Vale. We are now working with Creative Solutions to create something extra special inside as well as getting deckings added once they are moved to their new home! Find out more about them and prices here.

At Jurassic Retreat we are having another demonstration Lodge delivered next Tuesday. The Pinelog Skyline will go on one of the premier pitches next to the pond with a wraparound decking and is available from £. We will also be attending the Caravan, Camping & Motorhome Show at the NEC in a couple of weeks where another of our new demonstration Lodges will be on display.

View the brand new Pathfinder Retreat Lodge, with a lovely country feel. It will fit in perfectly at Jurassic Retreat in the village setting and will be delivered towards the end of the month. This will be available for sale for £199,950. If you are visiting the show, make sure you pop along, take a look and say hello to Darren, Paul and the Pathfinder Team. See images of the Pathfinder Retreat below…

Continuing the theme of Lodges, we recently had 2 new 3 bedroom Lodges delivered to Golden Cap Holiday Park, available for hire. With 1 dog friendly Lodge and 1 non-dog Lodge, we expect them to be very popular this year and have great views…see the images below! They are available all year round for short breaks and longer holidays.

You wouldn’t believe it but it is now under a month to go until our amazing Caravan Holiday Homes return on 1st March for there 9 month season at one of our five parks. We are just putting together the finishing touches on our exclusive and exciting owners calendar which will be popped in the post next week! (We hope).

This week at WDLH

This week at WDLH, we have been doing the following work across the Parks:

Highlands End

Highlands End Holiday Park re-opened this week for Touring Caravans and Motorhomes on select pitches and the maintenance team have been busy making changes and improvements to the toilet and shower blocks ready for their arrival. A new Bakery has arrived where you will be able to buy French Sticks, Rolls and Pastries. We also have a drinks list to be envious of including a Gin Menu with 21 Gins and 6 Fever Tree Tonics! We have had a great reaction to the news about our new Soft Play facility at Martin’s Bar & Restaurant at Highlands End Holiday Park, from both local residents and holidaymakers and we can’t wait for it to open in time for easter.

Golden Cap

Roads are nearing completion and we are working on the Touring Field and Owners Areas as well as lots of lovely Caravan stock turning up for sale. This includes this preowned Portland Lodge and a Shiny New Regal Elegance. We also have a secret operation going on in the reception and shop with an expansion of our food operation, a new reception and lovely new Coffee Machine.

Graston Copse

At Graston Copse we are in the middle of taking delivery of 7 new caravans for sale at just £29,995. Choose from the Willerby Lymington, Swift Loire, Europa Mulberry, Victory Torbay, Willerby Rio Gold, Carnaby Ashdale, ABI Oakley.

Larkfield Holiday Park

The Pathfinder Tuscany and the S Pod are now ready. The S Pod will be our new sales office on the park and the Tuscany our latest showpiece in the Jurassic Retreat Development – it is lovely and complete with a decking! If you would like to view the Pathfinder Tuscany or any of our other demo Lodges, contact the Sales Team on 01308 426917 or alternatively, we are having an Open Day on Saturday 24th March from 10am to 1pm!

Sandyholme

The Support Services team have been busy on the park with a changeover of Caravan Holiday Homes and tree work happening. We are also planning some other works around the park in the coming weeks with pathways, fencing and work in the Playground.

Finally, it’s been a week of mixed weather with some cold mornings on the parks, a beautiful misty sunrise in the Marshwood Vale and of course the supermoon on Wednesday evening! Here are some pictures we have taken this week…

A Jurassic February

The 26 metre long Diplodocus Dinosaur nicknamed Dippy is going on Tour and will arrive in Dorchester this February. All 292 bones will be on display for just 12 weeks near the Jurassic Coast at the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester. Luckily for you all this ties in perfectly with Highlands End opening next Friday for Touring Caravans and of course you can stay for a short or week break in our Lodges or Apartments. So book now for your chance to see Dippy by staying with us between 19th February and 8th May 2018. If you want to know more, click on the link below and you may also want to watch the documentary aired this month called ‘Attenborough and the Sea Dragon,’ staring David Attenborough.

Last night you may have seen Golden Cap Holiday Park on Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast! On a hot summer’s day in July, Jamie Oliver and Jimmy Doherty joined us at our Lodges at Golden Cap to give our guests a taster of some different seaweeds foraged from the waters off Seatown Beach. They then moved down to The Anchor Inn at Seatown to cook up some delicious recipes. Click here to watch the episode on catch up!

To find out more about Lodge holidays at Golden Cap Holiday Park or to make a booking, click here!

Tills, Food, Prices and Photography

A busy 7 days this week on the parks, thank you for all the feedback last week regarding the soft play at Martin’s it was fabulous to have so many positive comments. Some more details below along with what’s happened this week 😊

We welcome Tourers and Motorhomes back to Highlands End in two weeks on our 37 Hard Base Pitches. The Pitch developments and Tarmac will be complete and we are really pleased with the changes that have been completed over the last 8 weeks.

New Tills have been installed at Highlands End and Golden Cap this week, although this is not big news to a lot of you it is a big change for us moving into the 21st century with electronic cloud fed tills now being in all departments. Fun Times ahead learning how to set them up and use them to their full potential! Other fun this week has been making the new food and drink Menus, I won’t leak too much but here is some of the photography we took as a sneak preview. Martin’s will be open from 09.00 to 23.00 daily from 2nd February serving Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner… basically food all day! The Burger makes us hungry!

A year of Events at Martin’s. Along side our normal opening, Sky and BT Sports, soft play, Sunday Lunch and Cocktail menu we have drawn up an outstanding list of events for 2018 with something happening almost every 3 days and a staggering 100 ‘events’ happening between February and November. These including quizzes, Gin Masterclasses, music and our own Cider Festival.

Marketing – a busy time of year for us but you can now download our 2018 brochure which includes price lists. We are busy working on the on park marketing including our welcome brochure and park signage.

2019 Prices – Look out our 2019 prices will be live soon for Lodges, Caravans, Apartments and Bungalows!

Sales – caravan of the month is this stunning 2 bedroom Swift Burgundy at Golden Cap. Complete with a wrap around colour coded decking it is a great buy at a package price of £44,995 and available from 1st March for handover. Click here to find out more.

Happy New Year!

With only 3 weeks from today until the Hard Bases open at Highlands End for Touring and Motorhomes the parks beginning to come to life again after the Christmas Holidays. We came back to work on the 2nd January and we don’t know where the time has gone and this is what we have been up to:

At Highlands End C G Fry have been in converting the gym that has had dwindling numbers to be part of Martin’s. Below is an artists impression of the soft play that should be available from Mid-April along with some extra toilets for the building and a brand new store room. (Not as exciting as the Soft Play)

Also on Highlands End we have two major projects on going this winter. Firstly on the Caravan Holiday Homes where we are targeting to get caravans 1-108 on underground gas as well as upgrading the Electric and Water Supply. This has proved to be a bigger job than planned but we may get the whole park done but it will be weather dependant. On the Touring Field our toilet blocks are having their annual spruce up but most of the action is happening on the pitches. Grant Brooks and team are busy upgrading Hard Base pitches to be bigger and to meet the road. This includes curbing most of the roads and upgrading 6 of the grass pitches which are heavily used to Gravel. A busy time!

Our new Premier Camping Pods are under construction by Quality Pods Wales and they have sent us some preview photographs this week of their progress. The first 2 will be delivered in the next couple of weeks, followed by 4 more for Highlands End and 2 for Golden Cap. We can’t wait to get them finished!

At Golden Cap there is just as much action. This week we have taken delivery of the last two Horseshoe lodges. It was great to see this area completed and although the picture doesn’t do the unfinished lodges any justice here is a sneak peek! They are available to book from next month!

Elsewhere on the park the Golden Cap Team and one of regularly used contractors Alex Macdonald and his team are working tirelessly towards completing a few projects including:

Tarmac of a road and parking spaces in front of the Toilet Block on Alberlon

A new park water tank

Preparing all of the Holiday Home pitches for stock to be delivered for sale

A conversion of the TIC to park reception and a further upgrade of the shop

Introduction of a much needed road in Alberlon to over 20 of our owners Caravans.

At Graston, Larkfield and Sandyholme although no major projects the teams are continuing with upkeep of the park and are busy hedge cutting and recovering the parks from a busy 2017 season in preparation for the 2018 season starting 1st March.

This weekend is our team party, it is a great occasion with over 100 people attending this year including existing team members and their partners, contractors and new team members starting this month!

It’s nearly Christmas!

The team will finish work for their Christmas break next Wednesday so this is our last Friday working before Christmas which tied in with Christmas Jumper Day. Andrew who recently joined accounts came in with this amazing jumper and showed the rest of us up! – well done Andrew.

Out on the parks we are as busy as we always are in the short closed period. With the target of getting Highlands open again for 2nd February and most winter works complete, the park has been getting most of the attention over the last 2 weeks. This will change in the New Year as we get stuck into planned works at the other four parks but for now Highlands End is coming together nicely. This week we welcomed the last two lodges in Shepherds View to complete the development we started in 2012 and brings the Lodges to a total of 10 with a range of 1, 2 and 3 bedroom units available all year round for hire. It was great to watch them get craned on and the development completed and a real achievement for the team and the family.

As Martin’s Bar & Restaurant continues to develop its offering, we were very excited and pleased to attend a meeting earlier in the week and were told Gin Masterclasses are starting on Saturday February 3rd and for the first year ever we will be open for lunch through January, starting on the 3rd. From February 2nd we will open 9am until 11pm daily serving breakfast, lunch and dinner as well Costa Coffee and Cakes (Yummy).

At Highlands End we have started work on the Touring Pitches and for the fourth year in a row we are investing, not only in both Toilet Blocks, but also in the pitches themselves and the area around them. We will have 9 new Gravel pitches in 2018 as well as 19 Grass Pitches upgraded for Touring Caravans and Motorhomes from Camping.

We are also extending just over half of the hard base concrete pitches so they reach the road. We will also welcome 6 new Premier Camping Pods to the park in late March, check our the little flyer below – we are very excited!

We have also taken delivery of our new sauna at the Leisure Club at Highlands End. Work will begin on the 2nd January transforming the gym in the leisure club into something totally new and totally different for Martin’s Bar!

Another busy week at WDLH

It’s been another very busy week at WDLH.

This week the teams from Cresta Leisure and Helo Ltd have been busy at Highlands End Leisure Club, ripping out the sauna and installing a brand new one! The new sauna looks great and will open tomorrow.

After finishing the Jurassic Retreat Lodge Development at Larkfield Holiday Park last week, Grant Brooks and his team have now moved to Highlands End Holiday Park where they are developing grass pitches into gravel, extending some hard base pitches to the road and creating some new roads in South Rye Acres. Over the coming weeks, they will be moving into the area where our new Premier Camping Pods will be located to work on the landscaping, road and footpaths.

Today we announced the winner of our photo competition. There were hundreds of entries throughout 2017 and this photo below was the winning entry from Danielle Pearce, who wins £250 off a 2018 holiday. We think you’ll agree it’s a deserving winner! We will be running a new competition again starting in February 2018.

The Christmas functions are well under way in Martin’s Bar & Restaurant and we are welcoming a number of the local businesses up from the local area for their annual party nights. We are also running a daily advent calendar on our Martin’s Bar Facebook Page with giveaways and our Blaze Bear is getting up to mischief around the restaurant. Our main competition is to win a £100 stocking of local goodies – click here to enter the competition that ends on the 20th December.

The £100 stocking is not the only competition we are running. Click here for a chance to win a long weekend in one of our new 1 bedroom lodges at Highlands End Holiday Park. The first of these lodges was delivered this week and will be craned into place shortly – we hope to bring you a video of this next week! Look out over the Christmas break for our competitions to win a 2018 Leisure Club membership at Highlands End and a holiday in our Premier Camping Pods.

Excitement is brewing…

Excitement is brewing across the teams this week as the winter work is getting going and a few changes are beginning. The team in Martin’s Bar & Restaurant are busy with Christmas functions, with the first one starting at lunchtime today. We now have one or two almost daily until December 22nd when we close for our Christmas break.

We will soon take delivery of our portable bar, which will be used over Christmas as a wine bar. In 2018, the world is our oyster with ideas coming in from all angles including serving a variety of drinks at different times and occasions including cider, cocktails, gin, prosecco and even outdoor events in the beer garden…exciting!

Elsewhere, the Lodge development at Jurassic Retreat got its finishing touches this week with the tarmac going down and some planting. We also took delivery of a 3 bedroom Tuscany Pathfinder lodge, which is a stunning holiday home and the with its decking it really looks the part.

The maintenance teams are busy draining down the 600 or so owner’s caravans across the 5 parks, while inside we are having our normal clean ups and tidying. The Team Managers are busy looking ahead to new ideas we are implementing for 2018, which we will tell you about shortly! On our social media we have a couple of competitions beginning today including a competition to win a stocking full of goodies from Martin’s Bar worth £100 (click here to visit the Facebook Page to enter) and a competition to win a weekend stay in our new 1 bedroom lodges at Highlands End Holiday Park in January (click here to visit the Facebook Page to enter).

New Premier Camping Pods in Dorset

We’re excited to announce that we are introducing new Premier Camping Pods in Dorset to Highlands End Holiday Park and Golden Cap Holiday Park in 2018. The Pods, manufactured by Quality Pods in Wales, are designed to increase our range of Glamping accommodation across the parks and provide a more luxury feel than our existing Pods.

Due to the extra space inside the Pods, for the first time we are able to offer dog-friendly glamping accommodation, with 3 of the 8 Pods allowing dogs. We are excited to increase the range of dog-friendly accommodation as it is such an important part of what we offer. The pitches have been measured and over the next few weeks, work will begin on levelling the pitches and creating gravel bases for the Pods. Following their delivery in February and March, we will add private deckings to each pod, put up fences and work on the landscaping in time for opening on 30th March at Highlands End and 1st May at Golden Cap.

The Pods sleep up to 4 people with a double bed and 2 single futons. There is a small kitchenette with fridge/freezer, electric hob, toaster, kettle and cooking equipment as well as a built-in wardrobe, bedside tables and a fold-down table with stools. There will also be a small heater, led lighting thoughout and plug sockets and usb sockets. Linen is provided and beds are made up for arrival. While there is no running water in the Pods and therefore no kitchen sink or bathroom, these facilities are available nearby at the toilet and shower blocks.

The Pods will be in stunning locations on each park. At Highlands End, the 6 Pods and designated parking will be in a specific area with amazing views, just 100 metres from the coast path and a 10 minute walk from the beach and West Bay. At Golden Cap, the Pods will be located in Red Hill View, just round the corner from the existing Pods, the Safari Tent and the Stargazer Bell Tent next to the bridleway that runs down to the beach, just a few minutes walk away.

The Pods have been added to our websites and online booking system and the feedback from our Facebook Posts and email marketing looks great. We can’t wait to welcome the first guests in 2018!